Doing what I hate (travelogue)

This question could just as easily live under the Plot Development area, but...

It goes like this:

The chapter I'm writing at the moment is turning into a travelogue, and I abhor travelogues. It's not even about "how to write it", but about "how to make myself want to write it".

MC-A is on a month-long round trip to go fetch MC-B. The outward-bound leg of the journey was easy to engage because it's just MC-A and two diprotodons (giant rideable wombats) trekking through the bush. It was easy to give detail when and where I wanted and elide the rest as a time-jump. But the return leg includes MC-B and what I'm needing to fix with this chapter is the fact that the return journey is two weeks on diprotodon-back. It makes no sense at all for them to arrive at their destination as near strangers who then go on to learn the ins and outs of the respective other. Two weeks of travel together with no one else would be the logical slice of plot within which this should happen, or at least get well under way.

It's like pulling teeth. Shades of Lord Foul's Bane as we pointlessly ooo and ahh over a landscape like silly sunburned tourists dressed in goofy vacation gear within a tightly enclosed, air conditioned "safari" vehicle.

"Get the camera, Helen! Look! There's a thingamadoodle over there! Hurry! Hurry!"



For those of you who more-positively engage travelogue, how do you make it work? What are you focusing on? What are you looking for in this flavor of chapter? What makes it worth the while for you other than the blanket non-answer of worldbuilding?

 

I haven't written any travelogues, nor do I read much of them, but my advice would be to focus on where you want their relationship to be when they arrive. Then write scenes to show the changes needed to get there.

 

I think good travelogues work because the writer focuses more on relationships than the beautiful views, especially relationship with self. People usually travel with a lot of preconceived notions of what a country is like and how the people there behave and travelogues tend to focus on the shattering of those.

In your situation, I would explore the relationship between the MCs (as stated above). Did these characters know each other before the trip? Did they have preconceived notions of each other before the trip? Or if they just met, they would have probably made judgments about one another, and then to be stuck with each other for two weeks would probably prove if those initial judgments were correct or not. Are their own insecurities being revealed in these judgments? The two-week journey could even be a micro three-act story between these two characters and their relationship.

Just looked up 'diprotodons'. Awesome!

 

Their interactions, their attitudes towards each other. Two weeks is plenty of time to learn to hate someone. "One night at camp, Billy was sharpening his machete. Pedro got up and stood in front of him, blocking all his light, and Billy, burdened more than he could bear with Pedro's never-ending company, screamed and took Pedro's leg off at the knee." That sort of drama is always good. Interpersonal conflict. I know you're probably not writing a soap opera, but still.

 

I did a travelogue section once. It was a trip through Dante's Inferno, or my own version of it, and it helped establish the suffering and torment that lay all around.

First they passed through increasingly bleak areas, and when they entered the Inferno proper it ramped up rapidly to intense suffering all around. So in that sense the travel allowed me to change the setting as I went, to establish the mood or tone. It let me set up for the upcoming parts by allowing the characters and viewers to see what kind of hell was waiting up ahead, and watch it grow closer as they approached it. One of the big features was called the burning field (that's burning field, not a burning field. A field where people burn). At first all they saw was a column of smoke and couldn't tell how big it was, but it turned out to be massive, and the fire was so catastrophic it sucked air in from all around with a jet engine roar and threatened to pull them all in with its sheer force.

So I used the traveling for foreshadowing of a sort. But also to help establish the nature of the area they were in and at the same time their inner states (being in The Inferno and all, they weren't feeling top notch at the time). That would only work in certain kinds of stories though. If yours is set in a more naturalistic place it might not work well.

 

Everyone already gave great answers. This is one of those things where I would suggest less is more. This is where brief, quick scenes with simple, effective dialogue would do better than a long drawn out description of their voyage. Think of a few, small things that could happen on the way back, that are brief and slightly entertaining, that shows reactions to various things.

For example one scene they might have a camp fire and MC catches his pant leg on fire.

Another might be this new character is inspecting some rocks and makes a remark about that.

Maybe one of their previous paths got blocked and they have to take another route.

Again, keep it brief, but use it as a way to show reactions.

 

Thank you all for the input.

I've realized that my core problem is not this chapter, but the one prior. This chapter doesn't have a direction because I failed to give it one before this.

 

I have an epic journey from lower Idaho to Texas for my MC and survivors. I have introduced personalities and bizarre issues in the disaster, but relationships and fabric-of-mind will develop and change as they slog through the 'horrorscape'. They will discover that everything is far worse than they could possibly imagine, but that it presents solutions more clearly. They will lose people to tragedy and stupidity. They will gain many more, thousands more, until that presents its own problems and issues. They will arrive in a depopulated Texas, as a different society and culture and establish a community that they will then need to duplicate tens of thousands of times in the US. Then of course there's the rest of the world...
I have only clarified this much since I read this post. I have no idea how I will plan it or write it. I'm confronted with the flip-side problem of overwhelming the reader with too much story instead of boredom! I haven't the foggiest notion of what the Fortunate Mangled will encounter yet. I haven't written a word of it!

 

I wondered about that. Seems appropriate.

 

The thing that always works for me is to filter any/all background or setting information through the POV of a character. Get in your POV character's emotional state, thought processes, etc. What do your characters notice about this setting or think about this event? Are they looking forward to the return journey, or dreading it? Why? And if anything different happens to what they expect, that's what to focus on.

The descriptive details will matter to the reader if they matter to the character.